At least, their steel and resolve. When faced with long odds for victory and national destruction, the British turned to this hymn for encouragement and determination. Conservatives in our own country could sure use some of this same resolution.
This short two-minute hymn, though apocryphal, unites the British people perhaps even more these days than “God Save the Queen.” It is sung everywhere: the opening ceremony of the London Olympic games, featured in the movie “Chariots of Fire”, and the Queen sang along when this hymn was sung at the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. It is listed as the unofficial anthem of the United Kingdom.
Distinctively British and fairly ethnocentric, the hymn expresses the ultimate courage that the New Jerusalem (eternity with Christ) is our ever-present hope; that if there was something we could do to bring that about, then the sword of the Spirit in our hands would not sleep.
I’m particularly fond of the second set of couplets:
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land
And after all, Spencer is a distinctively British surname. Feeling their historic steel and resolve today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MwCUNgVdjE
You may wish to close out the advertising frisket that appears just after the video begins so that you may follow along with the lyrics by poet William Blake. The music was written by Sir Hubert Parry in 1917 as the country faced World War I. A year later, the war was over.